Williams v. National Football League

598 F.3d 932, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 29044, 2009 WL 6044000

Opinions

ORDER

The petition for rehearing en banc is denied. The petition for rehearing by the panel is also denied.

LOKEN, Chief Judge,

dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc.

I join Part II of Judge Colloton’s dissent. In addition, I conclude that another aspect of the panel’s decision warrants rehearing en banc.

The panel explains that the statutory-claims under Minnesota’s Drug and Alcohol Testing in the Workplace Act and Lawful Consumable Products Act were first asserted by Vikings players Kevin Williams and Pat Williams after the NFL removed their case to federal court. After dismissing the players’ common law and federal claims, and the NFLPA’s § 301 claim, the district court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over these statutory claims, leaving the injunction against the NFL’s suspension of the players in place while those claims are litigated in state court. In my view, this was an abuse of discretion that seriously jeopardizes important interests protected by the federal labor laws.

Even if § 301 complete preemption would not apply to removal of these Minnesota statutory claims to federal court, “when a defense to a state claim is based on the terms of a collective-bargaining agreement, the state court will have to interpret that agreement to decide whether the state claim survives.” Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386, 398, 107 S.Ct. 2425, 96 L.Ed.2d 318 (1987). The Minnesota statutes in question afford an employee remedies against his “employer.” See Minn.Stat. §§ 181.938, 181.956. Thus, one defense to these claims is that the NFL is not an “employer” subject to the statutory duties and remedies. As the panel recognized, the question whether, for these purposes, the employer of Kevin Williams and Pat Williams is the NFL or the Minnesota Vikings is complex. A proper answer requires analysis of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NFL and the NFLPA, the NFL Constitution and Bylaws, and the Standard Player Contract between the players and the Vikings. See Clarett v. NFL, 369 F.3d 124, 127-28 (2d Cir.2004); Mackey v. NFL, 543 F.2d 606, 610-11 (8th Cir.1976). Thus, the defense requires a sophisticated understanding of the collectively bargained relationships the “law of the shop” as the Supreme Court has called — it not mere reference to the bare terms of the CBA.

The NFL as a joint venture of individual professional sports teams has collectively bargained a regime in which players bargain some terms and conditions of employ individually with their teams while other terms “are reserved to the NFL and the players union’s selected representative to negotiate.” Clarett, 369 F.3d at 139. Preserving this regime is important to the federal labor laws:

Multiemployer bargaining itself is a well-established, important, pervasive method of collective bargaining, offering advantages to both management and labor. ... The upshot is that the practice at issue here plays a significant role in a collective-bargaining process that itself constitutes an important part of the Nation’s industrial relations system.

Brown v. Pro Football, Inc., 518 U.S. 231, 240, 116 S.Ct. 2116, 135 L.Ed.2d 521 (1996).

Moreover, § 301 preemption is not the only issue of federal law lurking here. If the NFL is not properly considered the players’ employer, the result will be a state law injunction against a non-employer that seriously undermines the collectively bargained competitive parity between NFL teams. This calls into play another facet of federal labor law preemption, “whether the exercise of plenary state authority to curtail or entirely prohibit self-help would frustrate effective implementation of the [Nation Labor Relations] Act’s processes.” Lodge 76, IAM v. Wisc. Employment Relations Comm’n, 427 U.S. 132, 147-48, 96 S.Ct. 2548, 49 L.Ed.2d 396 (1976) (quotation omitted).

In these circumstances, even if the district court and the panel correctly concluded that these Minnesota statutory claims are not completely preempted by § 301, it was an abuse of discretion to decline jurisdiction over these claims, which were first asserted in federal court and raise important questions of federal law. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.